The Letter
by ssoko
Summary: This story, written as a Summer Fiction Challenge in the TTS Forum. Even for a soldier some order could not be followed blindly. For mature people only


This story is written as a Summer Fiction Challenge in the TTS Forum. This story tries to show why Nash is with Richard. The same event could be analyzed regarding who look at it…

**The letter**

Patrick Nash entered into his room and placed the correspondence on the table.  
One of the letters had only the address on its front but he knew who sent it. It had arrived on time each year since four years ago. The Swedish stamp indicated that the letter had traveled a week to end into his hands.

He striped his blue t-shirt throwing it on a chair and walked at the bottles' collections above his desk. Anything helpful to ease his guiltiness was welcome and three bottles of whisky, minimum, would give him the strength to open the letter.

His fingers strangle the scotch bottleneck and uncorked it, then he poured the yellow liquid into a big glass. When two empty bottles were rested on the floor he dared to look at the envelope one more time.

During ten years her face, her eyes, her tears had haunted him.

The mechanical movement shoved the fluid through his throat then the empty bottle yelled when he threw it with the others.  
Using his sleeve as napkin he cleaned his right hands He noisily sighed and turned to face the envelope holding the empty glass as backup.

His fingers trembled when he grabbed the envelope, ripped it and daintily took out a salmon color leaf. He smelled the perfume and smiled reading the single word written on it.  
After all she had been through it was amazing she could remember him. It would be nice if he could even weep, but his heart was empty like the bottles on the floor.

Carefully he placed the leaf on the table once more while he sat down.

At least she was alive. It was just a miracle that she would survive the nightmare her life became after she met him... and his partners.

The glass surrounded by his finger broke under the pressure. A peace nailed on his palm. He watched as the red blood line slipped down.  
He could not hold back an ironic smirk.  
A peace of glass could be a better weapon than a gun. He knew it. The guns of his partners were useless against his fury and a single peace of glass.

Slowly he removed the spike off his flesh.

It was funny, after ten years the anger inside him persisted unalterable. And the first rule he learned as a soldier was to control his anger, his temper. The second rule he learned was to accept orders, never argue, never think, just do what they told him to do.  
He had been a cold brainless soldier before and after this day.

Ten years ago he had traveled across the desert. This unfriendly place needed a strong and helpful hand. They were there to save those people from their own barbarian customs, from their own barbarian religion, from their own barbarian way of live.  
They were there to enlighten them, to show them how the future would be.  
They were their protectors….  
But…  
Who could protect them from their protectors?

Fear always had been a good instrument to "teach" and they were the masters teaching those people. They were there to shows then their place into the world.

Patrick Nash leaned on the back of the chair closing his eyes remembering the day he and his partners, six tall men, were patrolling the streets of city that once had been beautiful. But beauty never could resist the power of the cannons.

It was late morning but the street was desolate.  
The Sergeant smirked and elbowed him so he noticed the small figure bend over on a corner searching… '_Probably something to eat_.' He thought. Even hidden under the dark rag he could perceive the lines of a young woman, a teenager perhaps.  
But he wasn't the only one.  
The men laughed so the girl raised her head and her brown big eyes winded showing the fear those soldier provoked on her. Her first reaction was to run away but she didn't move.

"What are you doing here?" The sergeant shouted.

'_Another stupid question_', Nash thought but didn't comment, her expression face showed clearly that she didn't understand what he said.

"Why these people don't know our language?" The man puffed and grabbed her arm shaking her, "You shouldn't be here girl." She looked at him trying to smile but his face wasn't friendly at all. The sergeant raised a brow. "You, stupid bitch, don't understand what I'm talking…" Nash bit his lower lip unable to answer honestly who the stupid was.

"They are stupid sergeant but…" Alfred, a red haired man, leered at her, "there is something she can do for us without talking…" Everyone laughed but Nash.

The sergeant didn't comment anything considering what Alfred had said. "She is not ugly…"

"Ok I would like to hear her cry out under me…" Another soldier stated laughing and they started to circle her slowly. Her big eyes stared at them but couldn't comprehend what they were talking about.

"Sergeant…" Patrick Nash tossed his sleeve when the man took out of the packet a coin, "we can't…"

"Shut up Nash…" The coin flew across the air and the man caught it into his hand. "You have to wait for your turn man… I win." he pushed the girl inside of an empty house. "After all, this is just a little payback for what we brought to this forgotten god place…"

Nash gazed each one of their faces then he looked at her face furrowed with silent tears of fear. She didn't need to understand them to comprehend what they would do to her.

"She is only… what, fourteen?"

"Nash!" the man shouted, "You are a soldier, not my stupid conscience!" and he hit Patrick's chest with his index finger. "Shut up and wait your turn or go to stroll until we finish with her!"

Patrick stepped back frowning then she started to cry and yell.

How the broken bottle reached his hand he didn't know but suddenly hundred of cries filled the air but it didn't belong to the girl…

Nash looked at his chest, his arms and his legs, he was wounded. They had shot him but the five men were bleeding on the floor with their necks sliced.

She got up in slow motion, muttered some words in a language he couldn't understand and then ran away.

Richard Clayton's fist squashed furiously the intercom on his desk. The electronic devise jumped and the secretary's voice sounded fearful. "Sir… he is in his room."

"Obviously he is in his room!" The magnate shouted. "This is the place he thought Richard Clayton would never dare to bothers him." He crashed the door office against the wall, "But he is wrong and I will prove him how wrong he is…"

Why everything refused to become as he expected. His brother, his sister… his nephew and now Nash! The world was against him, but he would vanquish this awkward fate.

He had believed to find in Nash the perfect CSO for his Company. He needed a soulless man for this job and nothing better than a man who could kill his five army's partners in cold blood. It wasn't easy but the Greystoke lawyer's bunch could save him for the death penalty but The Army had shamelessly dismissed him. There wasn't anywhere Patrick Nash could find a job but Greystoke.

Indeed Richard couldn't complain about Nash performance except one day at year, this day, and he didn't know why this cold freaking man become the drunk mess he saw sleeping in the table of his room. From the door frame Richard hesitated. He smoothly closed the door walking inside.  
As every year he picked up the bottles from the floor and crashed them in the garbage can afterward he entered into the bathroom and opened the shower. "A cold shower makes you feel better…"

Five seconds later he was lifting his drunken SCO from the chair and his eyes glided over the single word in the middle of the letter clasped on Nash's hand. He detached his fingers from the paper and tossed it on the table. "How could a simply 'thanks' makes you loose your control this way?" It was a question Nash refused to answer every time he asked.

Sighing the magnate dragged the CSO's company to the bathroom. After a cold shower the man would come be back to himself until the next letter… the next year.

The end


End file.
